A miscellaneous pile of fanfic scraps that demanded writing down, but nothing more just yet.
Welcome to my cryopod bank! This is the place where I store story ideas that compelled me to write at least a snippet of them, but haven't forced me to fill them out into full-fledged stories in their own rights.
If enough people decide they like one of the stories, or if a fey mood inspires me to expand upon one, that story will disappear from this anthology and become its own story post.
A blurb for each story appears in the author's notes at the top.
“A little to the left...good! Now just move that side of the banner a smidgimeter upwards and---perfect!”
“Thanks a bundle for helping out with this party for my sister, Pinkie! I dunno how I'd have gotten all of these set up in time without you.” 'Or up this straight,' she mentally added.
“You're welcome, Derpy! If there's anything I love doing, it's throwing parties. If that party's for a friend's relative, that's even better!” the premier party pony of Ponyville squealed. “Now let's see what we can do about hanging some more streamers...”
“Oh, I think this'll be enough. It'll just be me, Dinky, and Ditzy at the party after all.” The post office where Derpy made her residence was so stuffed with streamers and abounding with balloons and banners that it looked like some flavor of party-flavored ordinance had been detonated in it. Party cannons will do that to a place.
Exploding party decorations onto a scene is a fairly simple task: point an (in)appropriately sized party cannon at your intended target, light the fuse, and duck for cover. Getting said party decorations to look nice, on the other hoof, takes a good amount of time and tweaking. Not an amount of effort outside of Pinkie Pie's purview, thankfully. “Well, I can totally understand that some ponies prefer quiet get-togethers, and I respect your decision,” Pinkie stated with a salute. “You just have to let me lend you my Welcome Wagon at least! I didn't even get a chance to roll it out for her when she flew in for Winter Wrap-Up last year, and nopony's visit to Ponyville is complete without a certified Pinkie Pie Welcome to Ponyville™, which includes at least one blast from the Pinkie's Party Props Welcome Wagon®. I'm going to be so super busy with tending Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake when Ditzy gets here that I won't be able to roll out the welcome wagon myself. Could you please, pretty please, with sugar and sprinkles and cherrychangas and muffins and kumquats and pickle barrels---”
Opting to save her ears, time, and sanity, Derpy stopped up Pinkie's pie-hole with a hoof before she could delve too deeply into her list of toppings. “Okay, okay, I can see how much this means to you,” Derpy said while taking a proud stance. Beginning to beam, she continued, “Rest assured, Equestria's prime postal pony can deliver anything. She doesn't care if it's a package, a parcel, or a proper Ponyville greeting; nothing can stop Derpy Hooves from getting it through to its destination!”
About a quarter mile away from Ponyville and closing, there flew a gray pegasus mare with blond hair, bubbles for a cutie mark, and two of the most beautiful perfectly aligned golden eyes you've ever seen. Ditzy Doo, as the mare was known, had been flying in from Cloudsdale to visit her...eccentric twin sister. 'I wonder what that cloudcuckoolander is planning to talk my ears off about this time? I hope she tells me something with those evil Doorlocks and the time-traveling port-a-potty again,' Ditzy mused amusedly. While Ditzy would be among the first to admit that she's not altogether “there” and a bit of a featherbrain besides, Ditzy had no doubt that she was herself the better grounded of the two siblings. Derpy'd always be the one to come up with the crazy story to explain to their parents why they'd skipped curfew (the one where they'd gotten shoved into plastic cases, stared at giant hairless monkeys from humongous, overwhelmingly pink shelves, and had to escape through a garbage chute was a favorite of Ditzy's). Derpy would be the one to lead the charge in interesting new games (The floor isn't made of lava, Ditzy! It's made of liquid nitrogen so we can touch it a little, but not for long, and it makes really cool smoke clouds when you do!). She'd also be the one to fearlessly concoct bizarre recipes everypony else had the good sense to avoid trying to enact (although those Jalapeno-Banana-Lime Muffins tasted way better than they had any right to).
'No bones about it, Derpy is weird. It's a good weird, though. I wish I could come to see her more often. She's great for a laugh...and she always has the best stories. Welp, looks like Ponyville's getting awfully close! Now where's that post office again?'
The surprise party was all ready to be sprung. Pinkie had left an hour ago, but not before supplying Derpy Hooves with the genuine Pinkie's Party Props Welcome Wagon® and giving her some brief instructions on its operation. Something to the effect of “Remember that the baked goods are meant to go in the oven on the front while the stuff you want to spray all over the place gets loaded in the confetti blowers on top. Otherwise, things can get a bit embarrassing.” The pink pony looked awfully sheepish at that last bit, before poofing back to her normal, perky self and bouncing away. Derpy made extra sure to put the muffin batter in the oven and the bubble fluid in the confetti blowers. 'If only I could have remembered which setting on this infernal contraption corresponded to muffin baking. Was it preset 1? 2? 5? Why couldn't these just be written in temperatures like on a normal oven. I think 5 was for baking muffins...or was 5 the one for 100 pound cake? No, 5 was most likely muffins,' she assured herself.
Dinky had gotten home from magic kindergarten about ten minutes ago and was hiding behind a counter, preparing to pounce on her Auntie Ditzy as soon as the signal was given. Both Dinky and her mom were wearing silver party hats with golden poofball tassels, and the little filly had a silver and gold striped roll-up noisemaker perched in her mouth, ready to strike.
'Finally found that post office. Now I can finally see my sister again!' Ditzy, just a little tired from her trek, grinned at the door to Derpy's home. 'I can't wait to swap news from cloudsdale for her tales of wacky hijinks among the stars, or dinosaurs, or ents, or whatever it is this time. I bet she's gonna love the scoop I've gotten on who Spitfire's been seeing. Ah yes, it's been so much easier to come up with anecdotes for these get-togethers since I took up reporting. Hay, that's why I took up reporting in the first place. Couldn't think of any other way to keep my stories half as interesting as hers.
'And I can ask Dinky about how magic kindergarten is going. Does it work like flight camp does for pegasi? Come to think of it, I wonder what kind of special schooling earth ponies have to take...wait, why are the lights all off?'
“SURPRISE!” shouted Ditzy's near-double. Ditzy then proceeded to get the wind knocked out of her as a feral tooting unicorn filly glomped her.
“H-hello to you, too!” Ditzy sputtered. “How's my favorite unicorn?”
Derpy shouted, “Dinky, duck! Ditzy, open wide for your official welcome to ponyville!” Derpy stomped on a large pink button.
“Oh why are so many of Pinkie Pie's party props so very explosive? I ought to have a word with that mare about that...or at least on the proper labeling of dangerous machinery.”
“But momma, the explosives make everything so much more fun! A party just isn't a Pinkie Pie Party unless something's blowing up.”
“No buts, young filly. You saw what that welcome wagon did to my poor sister!” Cue an inarticulate moan from Ditzy. “She's only just now coming around. After firing that muffin sabot round at her face, I'm not even sure I can look her in the...eyes...”
“Tee-hee. Hey mommy, her eyes look like yours now!”
“Huh. Maybe that's why I can suddenly see in five dimensions,” Ditzy dazedly observed.
"Are you sure about this, Twilight? She may have become 'The Great and Apologetic Trixie' the last time we saw her, but she hasn't shown up yet without causing some kind of town-wrecking disaster. I think we should send her away," Spike whispered.
"Come on, Spike! I think we should give her a chance. I think she's honestly a changed mare who wants to get better at magic the right way," Twilight whispered back.
"Besides, Ponyville gets more-or-less leveled on a regular basis by some disaster or another. Hay, I've destroyed the town at least twice myself," she admitted.
"Yeah, yeah. We both know you're really just doing this so you can play Celestia and have somepony to call 'your faithful student'," Spike said with a smirk.
"I've got to get a start on my dreams somehow, after all," she giggled with a sheepish shrug of her horn.
"Trixie is not deaf, you know. Also, she is standing right here," Trixie stated with some controlled irritation. "So are you, Princess Twilight Sparkle, willing to teach Trixie to be a proper mage? Trixie promises that her days of deceit and darkness are behind her. Even if they weren't, your newfound divinity means that you could easily thwart any scheme Trixie could concoct before it got off the ground."
"I'll give her that point," Spike mumbled.
"For one thing, Trixie, my having wings, a horn, and increased stature and neck-length doesn't make me any more of a goddess than Big MacIntosh or Shining Armor."
'At least I think it doesn't–I'll have to look that up later,'she thought to herself.
"Regardless, Trixie, I think I can trust you and would gladly take you on as a stude–"
"But only if you make a Pinkie Promise first!" Spike interjected.
"A what?" queried a somewhat irked and perplexed Trixie.
"A Pinkie Promise is where you go through this little dance while saying 'Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!' And if you ever break one, I. Will. Find. You," Pinkie Pie expounded, punctuating her invasion of Trixie's personal space with emphatic jabs towards her great and powerful face. The pink mare then dove back into the shrubbery from whence she came, as if she was never there to begin with.
"I really wish you would stop doing that, Spike."
"Though Trixie is a bit unsettled, she agrees to your terms. Trixie swears that she will not do anything to usurp Twilight's power or authority or to harm the town of Ponyville. Neither will Trixie use any of her newfound magical prowess for evil, though she may use them for personal enrichment. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."
"That's good enough for me. Welcome to Ponyville, and thanks for volunteering to learn magic from me! I've always loved learning about magic, and I keep hearing that the best way to learn something better is to teach it yourself, so I'm really looking forward to this.
"There's still the issue of where you'll stay while you're in Ponyville as my student. It might be convenient to house you on-site at my home in the library, as it does have room for guests and you wouldn't need to worry about arriving late to your studies..."
The two unicorns continued to discuss arrangements as they walked towards the Books and Branches library or, as Spike was wont to call it of late, Princess Sparkle's Palace of Books. The smile on Trixie's face was more subdued than Twilight's enthusiastic grin, maybe even slightly humble, but it appeared no less genuine.
Spike, on the other hoof, was less than enthusiastic about this turn of events. 'Twilight may trust you, Trixie, but I've still got my eye on you. You're bad news, and I know it.'
With that thought in mind, Spike tailed the scholarly ponies to his home.
_-\*/-_
"And this, Trixie, is going to be your room for the foreseeable future," Twilight said with a yawn as she showed Trixie the guest room turned dorm room. "Wow, I'm tired. I keep forgetting how much growing takes out of a pony." She chuckled to herself. "See you in the morning!"
"Good night to you too, Princess Sparkle," Trixie cordially replied as her door shut behind Twilight.
Indeed, Twilight had been having a bit of a growth spurt lately, particularly noticeable in her neck and horn. Her face had been subtly shifting its structure as well, leaving her current visage partway between a young mare's approachable, round softness and the noble, chiseled, and some would say divine elongation of royalty. The combined effect had her catching a good deal more stallions' eyes, but more of these gazes ended up averted in deference, often with the stallion in question stealthily kicking himself. Twilight herself wasn't quite sure what she thought of this.
Trixie, for one, thought the changes suited her new princess. 'For one thing,' she thought as she hung her hat on a rack to begin her nightly bedtime routine, 'Twilight's newfound divinity makes stomaching my past failures easier. It's a lot easier to spin being thwarted by a goddess-in-training than being shown-up by some upstart unicorn in a backwater village, after all.
'And now, I'm taking lessons from one of the greatest and most powerful ponies in existence,' she thought with a smile as she slipped beneath her bedcovers. 'Nopony will dare to mock me now.'
She had good reason to smile as she slipped off to slumber. It's not every day that you make inroads with a freshly-minted friendly deity, after all.
Obvious Question vs. Rachis Barbule: Let's Get down to Business
"C'mon, Rachis. Today is going to be great! This consultant I hired is going to make our business really take off. My friend Lilly in Ponyville used him when they set up their flower shop, and they're doing really well!"
"I don't see why we need a consultant, Gillette. We can get our business up and running by ourselves. Besides, he'll probably just laugh at us like everypony else," I grumble.
"Rachis Barbule," she says, lifting my downturned muzzle with her wing, "I'm not laughing at you. Hay, you've managed to convince me to get in on this venture with you. That has to count for something, right?"
"I guess you're right," I reply with a soft chuckle as she takes her wing back, and I feel a bit calmer.
"All that said, I've heard this guy is a tough customer. If you can sell this idea to him, you could sell mud to an earth pony. In other words," she says with a wink and a grin, "we'll be ready for business.
"Now go out there, and work your magic!" she says as she flicks my horn with a midnight blue wing.
"He's not here yet."
"Not here yet?" she says incredulously as she rises to the ceiling of my office. "But the meeting was scheduled to start ten minutes ago! Are you sure you haven't been keeping him waiting?"
"Well, nopony has buzzed the doorspell, so I don't think he's here yet. Besides, you know how Canterlot morning hoof traffic is. Didn't you say he was from Ponyville? He probably hasn't seen streets this crowded before."
"Ok. I guess you ground pounders have to have some excuse for never getting anyplace on time," she says as she alights to the side of the door to the storefront. "Even so, you should probably be out there for when he actually does show up. Wouldn't want to give Obvious Question a bad first impression, right?"
"Right." I let out a nervous chuckle as I walk through the door to the front room of what will become my salon. Our salon. "Wish me luck!"
"You won't need it, but good luck anyway!"
I see a flick of her powder blue tail as she closes the door behind me to continue going through paperwork. Nopony ever said getting a business started in Canterlot would be easy. I'm glad to have somepony like her her on my side.
A few minutes later, a gray stallion with a short and shaggy, nearly black mane and bright, neon-green eyes. My eyes linger a little uncomfortably on his sharp little... stub of a horn, and then snap to his cutie mark: one of those question mark exclamation point thingies in a circle in the same eye-searing green as his eyes. I feel a buzz in my horn as he passes through the door, confirming that the doorspell I bought actually works.
'Relax, Rachis. Just be friendly, show him you know your stuff and take his advice to heart, and everything is going to be just fine.'
"Hi, I'm Rachis Barbule! Would you happen to be Obvious Question?"
"Ah yes, the obvious question," he says, giving a quiet chuckle. "I am he. Terribly sorry I'm late. Traffic was—”
"Say no more," I interject. "I know better than a lot of ponies how hard it is to keep a schedule in a strange place."
"Thank you. Now that we're both here, why don't we get down to business? Do you have some sort of office we could meet in?"
"Right this way, sir."
Since Gillette is in my office scaling Mt. Paperwork, bless her soul, I take him to her office instead. We'd only just moved in here to start our business, so it's still bare aside from a standing desk with a photo of Gillette with her parents resting on it.
"So, Mr. Barbule," he says as we take our positions on either side of the desk. "Shall we begin?"
"Sure!" the tan unicorn behind the desk replies. "Where should we start?"
Not a bad question. Heh. Thankfully, I have a ready answer.
"I find, when somepony is setting out to start a business, it helps me to help them if I know who they are and what they want to do. You would be surprised how often ponies forget that part. So, Rachis Barbule, what is your special talent?"
He turns a little to display his flank, saying, "I got my cutie mark for preening pegasus wings. I've even come up with a few spells to help me with caring for feathers. My brother always joked that I should have been born with a pair of wings instead of a horn, but then I wouldn't be nearly as good at caring for those magnificent appendages as I am."
"Ok. Now that I know a little about who you are, what do you want? What is it you're trying to do with this business?"
He thinks for a minute before replying. That's promising: It implies he cares what the answer is. It also implies he's going to give me a philosophical answer, but I can work with that.
"There are a couple of things that I really love: beauty, and pegasi. I love to see beautiful things, and the way a pegasus soars through the skies, the way their wings work... I can't think of a more beautiful thing in the world. If I can enhance a pony's beauty, even my own, then I leap at the chance."
He clearly believes in what he's saying. I mean, he keeps his coat and mane exceptionally shiny and well-coiffed, even for a Canterlot unicorn. The stallion is a walking advertisement for his skills.
"And that is why I'm opening a pegasus beauty salon!"
Ah yes, this is the part of my job that I hate. It's just about the most important part of it, though. If you let a pony keep their head up in the clouds while their hooves are still on the ground, they're going to trip and fall, hard.
And he looks so hopeful, too.
I turn to the nearest window and walk towards it.
"Take a look through this window, Mr. Barbule. It has a wonderful view of Canterlot."
"Ok..." he says as he walks up beside me.
"This is prime real-estate. A view like this can't come cheap."
"We do pay through the nose for this place, but it's got to be a great place to do business. I'm sure our customers will appreciate the location, too."
"About those customers. Tell me, Rachis, how many pegasi do you see out this window?"
"I don't see any out there, but that doesn't mean there aren't any around," he replies, a little nervously. "My partner had to come from somewhere, right?"
I shake my head and ask again. "Have you seen enough winged customers in this city of unicorns to pay for this wonderful view?"
His jaw opens, as if to supply an answer, but instead he deflates like a captive, untied balloon. Idealists always come down the hardest. I feel like I just bucked a puppy in the face. Well, I'd best not let up now...
"I hope you consider my questions, Mr. Barbule. I do want to see your business succeed. See you tomorrow," Obvious Question says as he leaves the building, tripping the doorspell on the way out.
I trudge back into my office to find a softly humming Gillette still hock-deep in paperwork, but a lot more of it is signed and filled-out now.
"Well, at least one of us is having a good day," I grumble.
"Oh. Hey, Rachis! I take it things with the consultant didn't fly so smooth?"
"You could say that, I guess." I plop myself down in a pile of filled-out but still disorganized paperwork. There's just something relaxing about the printed page.
Gillette smirks at me and my antics. "So, he shot you down?"
"Yes, but it's the way he did it. I want to hate him for it, but all he did was just... just..."
"Ask obvious questions?"
"Yeah. The kinds of questions I really should have been asking myself the whole time. Questions like 'How are we going to pay for this place if we only cater to pegasi?' Have you ever realized just how few pegasi live in Canterlot?"
"Idunno," she says while shrugging her wings, "I kinda like being the only one around who can fly."
I facehoof, and continue to wallow in paper.
"But yeah, I'd been kinda wondering about that myself."
"Well, I hadn't, and now I feel very, very dumb for that."
"Y'know, I'm pretty sure that consultant didn't just come here to tear you down and trample your dreams. What else did you two talk about?"
I spend a few minutes going over our conversation with her.
"Remember that question, about how we could make money while serving just pegasi?" she asks, after having digested the conversation for a couple minutes.
"Hard not to. What about it?"
"I think that the answer's in the question."
She looks around for a bit before finding what she's looking for, and waves me over as she walks up to the full-length mirror I keep in my office. What? A stallion has to look good in this business!
"What do you see here?" she asks, pointing at the mirror with a wing.
"It's a mirror," I deadpan.
"Ok, I flew right into that hillside. What do you see in the mirror?"
"The kind of fool who doesn't think plans through very well?"
"No, I'm looking for something a little more superficial. Pretend that stallion in the mirror is somepony else. What does he look like?"
I take a good, honest, evaluating look at that stallion in the mirror, and I like what I see.
"I see a dark tan unicorn with a brown mane streaked with gray. His mane is expertly styled, and his coat is so fine you could polish semi-precious stones on it. I wonder who does his grooming."
"Who indeed," she says with a knowing grin.
"So... The answer's in the question, huh?"
"Yep."
"Gillette, do I tell you often enough how much of a genius you are?"
"Nope."
"Well, you're a genius."
'This really is a lovely part of Canterlot where they have their prospective salon,' I think to myself. 'It's a shame that stallion probably hates me now for crushing his dreams. He definitely was not taking those doses of reality well.
'I do hope he can still benefit from my consultation,' I continue to think as I let myself in to their storefront. 'He clearly has potential. If only I can get him to see it the right way...'
Ok, I'm inside with Rachis Barbule, and he's not looking at me like I ate all of his pudding in front of him. In fact, he's smiling. Is he... happy to see me?"
"Hi, Obvious Question! It took some time, and some nudging from my partner Gillette, but I finally came up with an answer to your question about how we were going to make money while serving just pegasi in a city of unicorns."
This is unexpected. Color me intrigued.
"Really? What is it?"
"It's simple, really: We don't!" he shouts confusingly gleefully.
"Wait, what? So you're just giving up?!"
That isn't the direction I'd hoped things would take at all.
"No no no no no," he says, applying forehoof to face. "What I mean to say is we were setting our sights too narrow before, and were selling ourselves short in the process. We're still going to be serving pegasi, but we'll be serving other ponies, too. Specifically, stallions. There may not be many pegasi here in Canterlot, but there are just as many stallions here as anywhere else. Hay, maybe even a little more than in most places. And if there's something different about Canterlot stallions, it's that they always want to look their best.
"If you hadn't asked me those 'obvious questions,' I might never have figured that out in time. Thanks!"
I'm so glad to hear him say that, to hear that I'd done what I came to do and everything was going to to work out right. I'm so happy, I could just— Aww, why the hay not!
I glomp him hard.
"Hey, Questy, watch the mane. It took me a full ten minutes to make it look this good!"
"Rarity, did you hear?" Spike said, waving his arms frantically. "The Cakes just had twins!"
"That's wonderful news, Spikey-wikey. Hmm... What to bring them as a gift? I could always go with a gold nugget, I suppose. It's traditional, but it's just so impersonal."
"Tradition?" Spike replied, raising one scaly eyebrow. "I guess it is sorta their birthdays, but aren't they a little too small to appreciate presents right now?"
Rarity tittered. "Nonsense, Spike. Every hoard needs to start somewhere, and it's my responsibility as a friend of the family to do my part. At least, that's how it was explained to me when we did this for Sweetie Belle. Friends and extended family crawled out of the woodwork from all over to pitch in for hers. And for mine too, I suppose.
"Come now, Spike!" she said, prancing over to what could only be described as a treasure chest and unlocking it with her magic. "If we pick out something just right for one of the foals, it could end up as their hoard's centerpiece!" And then various beautifully crafted odds and ends began to spill into the air, each one wrapped in her telekinesis's blue glow.
'It's funny,' Rarity mused as she and Spike rummaged through the chest of semi-valuables for something appropriate, 'I never saw any eggs around the Cakes' residence. They must have been keeping them warm in the oven.'
"Aha!" she cried out, holding her prizes aloft: a crystalline mallet and a topaz-encrusted tiara. "They're perfect."
"You sure? How do you figure? And aren't those a little big for foals?"
"In reverse order: Three, they'll grow into them later, and they're going to be kept in a hoard most of the time anyway. Two, a mare just knows these things, Spike. And one, absolutely.
"Now let's go and see these precious foals!" She flounced to the front and slammed the boutique's doors open dramatically, before some of the certainty evaporated from her eyes. "Actually, where are they?"
My automobile had been running poorly. Barely running at all, to be truthful. So I took it in to a mechanic.
I told the mare it had been acting strangely lately. It would turn on, but there was always a delay and it was always jerky when it started out, though it would smooth out after a few minutes. The muffler was acting odd, too: there was hardly any smoke coming out, and what little did smelled oddly sweet.
She asked if I'd taken a look under the hood. I embarrassedly told the mare that I loved the vehicle like a family pet, but my beautiful wife had absolutely forbidden me from working on anything mechanical after the pedalthopter incident.
As I was wending my way through that anecdote, she mosied around to the front of the vehicle and popped the hood open, and a belch of green flames greeted her immediately.
"Exactly what I was afraid of," she said. "Changelings."